December 30, 1932 – June 11, 2021
Born in 1932 in Stuttgart, Germany, Laura Altschuler (nee Arnstein) was quickly deprived of the rights of citizenship and protections of the law in her native country. This experience influenced her lifelong advocacy for informed participation in the representative government of her adoptive country - the United States - to which she emigrated in 1939. She embraced her new language and culture with the energy and curiosity that became her defining qualities. Laura graduated George Washington High School as Valedictorian (1950) and earned a Bachelor of Business from Baruch College CUNY in 1954. Her career in fashion culminated in her role as a buyer for the Oval Room at Orbach’s, from which she retired in 1963. In this job, she developed a taste for European travel which never diminished. At Baruch she met William Altschuler, marrying him in 1955. Upon the arrival of her son Ted and daughter Susan, she started a second career as a mom and community volunteer. Her involvement in her childrens’ public school education, beginning with the 1968 teacher’s strike, awakened a lifelong commitment to community involvement, leading to active roles in her coop, community School Board elections, and the Parent/Teachers Associations of the Bronx High School of Science and the High School of Music and Art. Among Laura’s passionate interests was a desire to see Americans become the most informed citizens they could be in order to fulfill their responsibility for electing the people who represent them. She worked towards this cause by serving on the Board of Modern Courts and, especially, The League of Women Voters of the City of New York. In 40+ years at the League she served as President (c. 1987 - 1991), held workshops to educate New Yorkers how to run for office, and established the League as a non-partisan sponsor of televised candidate debates for local, state and national elections, collaborating first with Public Access television and later with WABC, where she shared her expertise on debate formats until recently. Laura’s lifelong enjoyments included travel, especially to Italy and France, and life in New York City, featuring the ballet, opera, and theatre productions she loved to attend with her husband, children, and friends.
She is survived by her children – Ted (Michael Mitchell) and Susan, her grandchildren Stefanie, Daniel, Brandon and Leslie, and great-grandchildren Jeremy and Oliver.
Contributions can be made in her honor to the League of Women Voters of the City of New York, Memorial Sloan Kettering Hospital, and the Hebrew Tabernacle of Washington Heights.
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